


The Priest That Tastes The Word

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Askewniverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-21
Updated: 2005-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1633274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by proserpina</p><p>Being the Voice of God could be a confusing experience. He was never quite sure which thoughts were his own and which were the speech of God. Usually the distinction was clear, but stillwhenever he found himself waxing poetic on the graces of the Almighty, he always found it a bit suspect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Priest That Tastes The Word

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Luna

 

 

Some people spend their entire lives searching for God. They climb mountains, abstain from sex and food and a thousand other things, pray and philosophize and basically think themselves into corners until they finally realize there's nothing to find except faith.

That's because people, with a few exceptions, are uniformly stupid.

The Metatron was not a person, and he knew exactly where to find God. All he had to do was walk down the Jersey shoreline and listen for the crack and whoosh of skeeball being played.

Of course, once he was there, it was a bit difficult to spot the body God had decided to test drive this week amongst all the other sad old fuckers hurling balls into holes. It would be nice if God made this a little easier-maybe a tasteful little sign, visible only to angels, and perhaps a prophet or two if God felt like dealing with them at the time; although God wasn't generally a fan of little and tasteful, being more inclined towards huge and majestic-but He tended to turn His divine spark down to human levels unless He was meeting with someone of Biblical importance. It tended to distract people, who in turn distracted Him, and God didn't like being distracted while He was trying to play skeeball.

Despite the absence of signs, it eventually became clear, at least to Metatron, which one was God. The other players, no matter how involved they were in the game, laughed with friends or yelled out in triumph when they got a high score, or swore under their breaths when the ball went into the gutter. God, by contrast, seemed serenely fixated on the game, scoring point after point in perfect silence.

Of course, he'd been waiting for His Voice to arrive.

Metatron sighed and walked over to stand at God's side. "You know," he said, "I had hoped that after that little incident with the hellbrats and the coma and those ridiculous angels, you would start restricting yourself to enjoying the human experience vicariously. From on high, as it were."

God turned His head, giving Metatron an amused look. The body du jour was male, in its early twenties, with the baggy clothes and spiked hair of a million and one stoner kids. Still-however much His divinity was shielded, it showed in His eyes, which were currently wide and blue, full of wisdom and kindness and such boundless understandi-

Metatron stopped that thought in its tracks. Being the Voice of God could be a confusing experience. He was never quite sure which thoughts were his own and which were the speech of God. Usually the distinction was clear, but still-whenever he found himself waxing poetic on the graces of the Almighty, he always found it a bit suspect.

Metatron listened to the thoughts in his head, and then jerked his head around to glare at God. "I will *not* be writing you sonnets," he hissed, then winced as the rest of the skeeball enthusiasts turned to stare at the middle-aged Brit refusing to write poetry for the stoner.

God surveyed the confused crowd, then rolled His eyes at Metatron. Or rather, Her eyes. God was now a nine-year-old blonde girl with glasses, pigtails, and a mischievous grin. Nobody noticed the difference, because there was no difference. She had always been a little girl, with blonde pigtails and-a balloon tied around one wrist.

For all the debate about free will and the nature of reality, people so often failed to realize how much God changed reality merely by existing. God shaped reality. God was reality.

Reality was currently holding up a balloon-wristed hand for Metatron to hold.

"I take it you're ready to leave, then?" God stared up at Metatron with a smile-an adorably gap-toothed smile, of course. Metatron sighed and took Her hand. It was sticky-God had an eye for detail.

They walked out of the skeeball arcade and onto the boardwalk. God let go of Metatron's hand to run and skip ahead, turning the occasional cartwheel as Metatron strolled behind Her and tried to project an air of never having seen this sugar-hyped child before. He certainly wasn't going to pretend to be Her father or something equally appalling.

God stopped to look back at him with a grin, and Metatron stopped cold. "No," he growled. "I certainly do not look old enough to be your grandfather."

*

God decided that She needed a bit more of a holiday, so they ended up in a pricey hotel somewhere in Europe. Metatron was fairly sure that it was France, but since God was fond of whimsy and had merely made them temporalize in the hotel room rather than go through the usual channels of booking a room, he hadn't seen any of the staff and as such wasn't quite sure.

When Metatron mentioned this, God's voice in his head blithely informed him that they were in Italy, and that She'd seen the way he commonly avoided making reservations for restaurants, so he had no place to talk.

God was now a sultry-looking brunette in a Catholic school uniform. A small gold cross dangled between her rather large breasts, catching the light and the eye in distracting ways. As irony went, it wasn't God's best.

The room was really quite lovely. The walls were cream-colored, while the bedspread and curtains were a dull gold-somewhat like the celestial sphere, Metatron was surprised to observe. The furniture was modeled after 17th century pieces, which was a period Metatron had particularly enjoyed, and lamps, as well as the sunset from outside, cast a pleasant glow over everything.

He looked closely at a painting on the wall. "That's a rather good reproduction. Reni, isn't it? *Atalanta and Hippomenes*?" He glanced over at God, then scowled at the small, knowing smile on Her face. "It is a reproduction, right?"

She raised her eyebrows exaggeratedly and shrugged, as if to say, who knows? Perhaps original works of Italian art pop up on hotel room walls all the time.

Metatron was interrupted from his scowling by a knock on the door. God sat on the bed, crossed her legs at the ankle and swung them childishly while Metatron answered the door and tried to remember why he hadn't let the angels destroy existence.

He'd be expecting a Girl Scout, or a wandering troubadour, or perhaps a mime (God and Her pesky sense of humor-often funny, just as often disturbing), but instead he found a man bearing a room service cart and looking rather confused. Metatron waved him in and glared at the grinning deity on the bed.

The man deposited a cart with a covered dish in the center of the room, seemed to think he'd gotten a large tip, and went away happy. Metatron put an American fifty in the man's pocket so he wouldn't be disappointed later. While God could of course do these things Herself, for some reason it amused Her to have Metatron do it, instead. Rather more like being a butler than an angel, sometimes.

When he turned around, God had taken the cover off the plate and was picking through a pile of strawberries, trying to find the ripe ones. She ate one, then offered a glass of champagne to Metatron. When She smiled, he noticed that She had strawberry seeds caught in her teeth. She ran Her tongue over Her teeth and gave him a dirty look.

He took the champagne flute, as well as an empty one. "Why, thank you. I just adore being given drinks I'm unable to fully imbibe." He swallowed the champagne, swirling it around in his mouth and enjoying the sweetness, then spat it into the empty glass. "Yum."

God quirked Her mouth at the corners and shrugged.

"I would like to point out once again that it's utterly unfair that the rest of us must be punished for the actions of those two idiots." Metatron pictured Bartleby's head exploding and felt a perverse amount of satisfaction at the memory. It was the least he deserved, the bastard.

God shook Her head disapprovingly and popped another strawberry in Her mouth. Then She stood up, unbuttoned Her shirt (no bra underneath-if God was really human, Her back would've been hurting with the weight of those breasts), and lay facedown on the bed. Metatron stared at Her, looked up to the heavens, wondered why he was doing that, since God was right in front of him, then took off his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. He rolled up his sleeves as he walked towards the bed, saying, "You know, while you're trying out the body, you might be pleased to know it's a polite human custom to ask for backrubs, rather than just throwing yourself topless and facedown in front of people. You've nothing to worry about from me, obviously, but one of these days someone's going to get the wrong idea of what you're after. Particularly if you're still wearing the Catholic schoolgirl outfit," he added after a second.

God made a 'pffft' noise and Metatron made one in response, and then he began massaging Her back. Her skin was warm and firm under his hands, and there was a bit of tenseness about the shoulders that he tried to rub out. He didn't really understand why there was tenseness-She was God, after all, and it wasn't as thought this was a real human body that lived and worked and picked up heavy things and got backaches-but it was there nonetheless.

Ever since the incident with the coma and the moronic angels, it had become something of a tradition for Metatron to accompany God on her little vacations, or at least pick her up once she felt sufficiently rested. Sometimes they went straight back to Heaven, sometimes they went to a nice restaurant (of Metatron's choosing, usually-God always wanted to eat something odd, like monkey brains or corn dogs), and sometimes they came back to a hotel and Metatron gave God a backrub. God had somehow decided that, after skeeball, backrubs were the best thing on Earth. They didn't do much for Metatron, but then, he wasn't on the receiving end. He also didn't bother with all of those glands and chemicals and things that God used when creating a mostly human body.

God told him that glands and chemicals were the best part of a human body, and Metatron retorted, "That's not what you'll hear most humans say. I told you in the beginning that genitals were a bad idea, but no, you just had to have a laugh. And now look what you have: a planet of sex-obsessed idiots."

The next thing Metatron knew, he had genitals, glands, and, because he was on top of a half-naked girl, an erection. He made a noise that he was fairly sure had never been uttered before by anyone in existence (and he was the archivist, he would know) and leapt away from God with his hands out. "What the bleeding fuck!" he yelped. He looked down at the erection. It was spoiling the line of his pants.

God turned on Her back and stared at him, giggling soundlessly. The breasts just made the erection worse.

"Oh yes, utterly hysterical," he said in a strangled voice. "Now take it away, it's making me stupid!" No matter how hard he tried, he could not look away from Her breasts. Or Her thighs, which were peeking out from under Her short skirt and highlighted by the white thigh-high stockings She wore.

God rolled Her eyes and put a pillow over Her lap, pulling Her shirt back on at the same time.

"Yes, that's a little better. Thank you," Metatron said primly. "Now can you explain to me what the fuck is going on?"

The stereo turned on, softly playing *Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars*. There were candles lit around the room, which hadn't been there previously. And God was in his head, telling him that She wanted to make love.

"You want to what? But...why?" He listened. "You know what it's like, you bloody created it. You should know better than anyone."

She came closer and touched his face with one hand, gently cradling his cheek. He looked into Her eyes and saw what he always saw there: kindness, understanding, wisdom. Loneliness.

That was the thing about God. Yes, humans rejected Her, but that was because most of them had never met Her. When She was right in front of you, staring into your eyes, She was utterly irresistable.

He sighed. "All right," he said as he leaned in to kiss Her, "but I'm still not writing you any sonnets. A haiku, at most."

(Title comes from Soul Love by David Bowie, from the album Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.)

 


End file.
